Great guest blog from Sonru client Calli Amiras, Deputy Director of the Placement & Careers Centre at Brunel University. Calli tells us how they use Sonru for so much more than mock interviews, which was their original intention, and how their use of Sonru has enabled them to coin the phrase ‘the Alfie effect.’

I like to think that the Professional Development Centre at Brunel University is ahead of the curve. We’re early adopters, for example we piloted InterVisual- a video recruitment solution – over six years ago, that was long before video interviewing was being used in mainstream recruitment, not to mention academia.

Given Sonru’s position as market leader amongst AGR members, they had been on our radar and so two years ago, we took out a small number of licenses and I’m quite proud that we were the first University Careers Service in the UK to use video interviewing.

Our original intention was to use Sonru for mock interviews but in practice we’ve done so much more such as:

Extension exercise Level 1 careers module Business School

HR Masters Programme experience of recruitment tools

MBAs

Interview training for international students : International pre-Masters

Internal selection: Phd teaching assistants

Mini internship local companies

Fast track placement/graduate scheme bundled with CV

Staff using the system commented on the ease of use and time saving during review and students were happy to be able to practice in the comfort of their rooms and get guided feedback during a review with a careers consultant.

Initial outcomes

The one-to-one mock interviews and feedback sessions were greatly enhanced. The advantage of being able to review and go over responses a number of times is a huge benefit. Students aren’t always able to remember accurately what they have said and seeing themselves on video enhanced the feedback and learning

Our students had been encountering online videos in various selection processes and were impressed that we could help

We used it with module development

It generated group work samples to critique

Facilitated In-house selection

Paved way for more informed and faster initial screening

The “Alfie Effect”

For our Fast Track Scheme, the careers service invited candidates to complete an asynchronous video interview which we bundled with the CV and sent to Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Meet Alfie, here is a snippet of his “less than impressive” CV

Now here’s a screen grab of his Video Interview

When Enterprise Rent a Car saw Alfie on screen and listened to his responses, they invited him to the face-to-face interviews.

Alfie was hired and in fact was awarded a prize as highest performing student on the scheme.

He is now an ambassador for Enterprise Rent-A-Car on campus and we all agree Alfie would definitely not have been selected if shortlisting was paper-based.